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Apple threw headphone makers a curveball by removing the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. While Apple still ships some iOS products with a headphone jack and others with just Lightning, any headphone make that wants to provide a headphone that works with both has a dilemma. Audeze has come up with the SINE On-Ear Headphone ($449), an interesting high-end set of headphones that plays nice with Lightning for digital audio and the traditional analog audio jack.

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The SINE On-Ear Headphone lets you plug in a cable with a Lightning connector on one end and the cable splits into a left and right channel that plugs in to each earcup. Or you can use the analog audio jack cable that works similarly. Both have in-line controls for pause/play and volume.

Physically, the SINE uses heavy-duty materials and construction, but the headphones themselves aren't that heavy. In fact, they are quite comfortable thanks to asymmetrical swiveling leather earcups. On top of this, Audeze has a clever equalizer app that you are prompted to install when plugging in the Lightning connector. The equalizer lets you adjust all frequencies of the audio signal and you can save presets for classical music versus rock, for example.

Pros

Heavy-duty materials and construction

Comfortable swiveling earcups

Dual-mode: Lightning or audio jack

Inline controls

Clever equalizer app

Cons

Expensive

Cable connects to left and right ear cups

Final Verdict

The SINE headphone from Audeze is a high-end set of headphones that has a thoughtful approach to using both a Lightning port and audio jack.

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Todd Bernhard is a bestselling (6+ million downloads) award-winning (AARP, About.com, BestAppEver.com, Digital Hollywood, and Verizon) developer and founder of NoTie.NET, an app developer specializing in Talking Ringtone apps including AutoRingtone. And his profile photo is of the last known sighting of Mr. Bernhard wearing a tie, circa 2007!

An iPhone is almost always attached to his hip or in his pocket, but over the years, Mr. Bernhard has owned an Apple Newton, a Motorola Marco, an HP 95LX, a Compaq iPaq, a Palm Treo, and a Nokia e62. In addition to writing for iPhone Life, Mr. Bernhard has written for its sister publications, PocketPC Magazine and The HP Palmtop Paper.

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